5K run
My wife's work was sponsoring a local running event and strongly encouraging their associates and staff and families to participate. I enjoy running, and I've frequently run much further distances...but I've actually only raced that distance once, and that was in high school.
To add to my uncertainty, most of my exercising of late has been pacing back and forth with my daughter, not running. I've done some biking, some stroller-walking, and some pick-up basketball games, but I think I'd only been running two or three times since she was born in April. My hope is that once my son starts preschool (tomorrow, actually...yikes), then I'll have some chances to take my daughter out in the jogging stroller, but that doesn't help much when it comes to preparing myself for the race this morning.
So I had no idea what kind of time I might get. At my peak mileage in college, I always suspected that I'd be able to go 16 minutes pretty easily and with a few races to get used to the pacing, probably even faster, though of course that was just guesswork based on the pace we did on much longer runs. The pace I'd been going with the jogging stroller (and a 35-pound child), though again for further distances, would have put me at something closer to double that.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit my time--it was no where near 16 minutes. I'd only just passed the 2-mile mark by about then. But it wasn't as bad as double either, and I enjoyed it. Hopefully I can do the kind of running I'm envisioning over the next few months, and then maybe I can try another race in November or so.
My wife's work was sponsoring a local running event and strongly encouraging their associates and staff and families to participate. I enjoy running, and I've frequently run much further distances...but I've actually only raced that distance once, and that was in high school.
To add to my uncertainty, most of my exercising of late has been pacing back and forth with my daughter, not running. I've done some biking, some stroller-walking, and some pick-up basketball games, but I think I'd only been running two or three times since she was born in April. My hope is that once my son starts preschool (tomorrow, actually...yikes), then I'll have some chances to take my daughter out in the jogging stroller, but that doesn't help much when it comes to preparing myself for the race this morning.
So I had no idea what kind of time I might get. At my peak mileage in college, I always suspected that I'd be able to go 16 minutes pretty easily and with a few races to get used to the pacing, probably even faster, though of course that was just guesswork based on the pace we did on much longer runs. The pace I'd been going with the jogging stroller (and a 35-pound child), though again for further distances, would have put me at something closer to double that.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit my time--it was no where near 16 minutes. I'd only just passed the 2-mile mark by about then. But it wasn't as bad as double either, and I enjoyed it. Hopefully I can do the kind of running I'm envisioning over the next few months, and then maybe I can try another race in November or so.
Comments
Anyway, you did better than I did... a group of us from the dorm went down to Wreck Beach from campus (a staircase 420 steps deep), and I about passed out on the way back up. I've never gotten dizzy climbing before--even got up to Neuschwanstein castle in June without too much difficulty, and that was a much further climb much further above sea level. Can't explain it.
Now that I'm an old man, I still like running. I can shut myself out of the real world and think. And being overweight makes running hard for me. I've set a goal to run a race next month and I doubt I'll be anywhere close to the 30 minute mark. Right now I'm on a 40 minute pace.
Just keep going, you'll get faster.
My older brother is still running sub-18, it looks like from a quick Google check. Well, actually he's training for a marathon now, so I don't think he's running any 5k's, but as recently as last year. I don't expect to do the kind of training to do that, but I'm hoping I can do enough to go, let's say 21 minutes. That's 4 minutes faster than yesterday...or actually a little less, since it took a while after the gun went off to get from where I started to the actual start line.
Neuschwanstein, huh? Did you climb up the mountain behind the castle? There were some nice views from up there, as I recall.
We went to the bridge, which was uphill from the castle, but no higher up than that. Of course we only found out on the way down that there's actually a bus that goes right up to the bridge. Oh well, gets the blood pumping. I remember thinking it was hilarious that we had to get to the ticket counter an hour ahead of our scheduled tour time, because the hike can take some people that long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasser